Discrimination in the United States

Any student of history knows the sad fact that our country has embraced discrimination from its birth. Slavery was both accepted and justified, and eventually led to a Civil War resulting in over 600,000 fatalities.

While slavery may have then ended, it was followed by the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws. Segregation and the ban on interracial marriage only ended with Supreme Court decisions in 1954 and 1967.

But our shameful national discrimination also extended to women, who were not allowed the privilege of voting until 1919. Our appalling treatment of Native Americans extends to this very day with the NFL’s Washington franchise using the pejorative term “Redskins”.

Which leads us to the very reason that our State must bury its attempt to discriminate against homosexuals through a constitutional ban on gay marriage. First and foremost, would those who advocate for this anti-gay proposal please stop using the Bible and Christianity as justification? Looking at the gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, how can they ignore the foundation of a religion that calls for everyone to “love thy neighbor as thyself”?

Additionally, as Joseph J. Ellis noted in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Founding Brothers, Georgia Congressman James Jackson based his partial support of slavery in a 1790 address to Congress on the assertion that all Georgia Christian ministers agreed. Eric Miller’s ancestors were wrong then, and his use of a dead mantra is as embarrassing now as it was 200 years ago.